This disclosure relates generally to the field of distributed datastores and a cooperative identification methodology for physical and logical items which may have an associated information record in more than one of the distributed repositories. Because an item might have properties distributed across datastores, a unique identifier could help programmers and users of the distributed datastore coordinate maintenance of the data associated with the item. In the context of this disclosure, the item will be referred to as a Configuration Item or (CI) as used in the context of a system enterprise management system. However, this is only for clarity of explanation and not intended to limit the scope of this disclosure to only CIs and CMDBs (explained below). Any type of distributed datastore could benefit from concepts disclosed herein.
In one embodiment, this disclosure relates to coordinated identification of Configuration Items (CIs) across a plurality of distributed datastores known as Configuration Management Databases (CMDBs). CMDBs are ITIL®-based (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) datastores. (ITIL is a registered trademark of The Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury acting through The Office of Government Commerce and Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency, United Kingdom.) One example of a distributed datastore is a collection of distributed (and also possibly federated) CMDBs. ITIL-based CMDBs are emerging as a prominent technology for Enterprise Management Software.
The usefulness of distributed datastores, in particular distributed CMDBs, is dependent on the quality, reliability and security of the data stored in them. A CMDB often contains data about managed resources known as Configuration Items (CIs). ITIL version 3 defines a CI as: “Any Component that needs to be managed in order to deliver an IT Service. Information about each CI is recorded in a Configuration Record within the Configuration Management System and is maintained throughout its Lifecycle by Configuration Management. CIs are under the control of Change Management. CIs typically include IT Services, hardware, software, buildings, people, and formal documentation such as Process documentation and [Service Level Agreements].” Each of these groups of CIs is also typically broken down into specific “classes” of CIs. Typical classes include, but are not limited to, Computer, Hardware, Network, Software, and Location (e.g., physical such as a room, logical such as a domain, or geographical such as a city). Each of these classes can be further broken down into subclasses or other groupings (e.g., based on implementation specifics). For example, the Computer class may be divided into the following four distinct groups: laptop computer, desktop computer, server computer, and mainframe.
The CMDB serves as a point of integration between various IT management processes. For a variety of reasons there may be more than one CMDB present in a customer environment (i.e., distributed CMDBs). Also, data from multiple sources often needs to be managed directly or by reference in commercial CMDBs. Thus, there was a need to create a standard for federating the data from various CMDBs into a single view that appears seamless and integrated to the end user. This standard, known as the CMDB Federation, or CMDBf, Standard was recently adopted by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) as Document Number DSP0252.
Some of the goals of CMDBf include: enabling a variety of data consumers to access a federation of management data through a standard access interface; enabling a variety of data providers to participate in a federation of management data through a standard provider interface; and providing an approach for reconciling and combining different information about the same resources.
Because a given instance of an item (e.g., CI) being tracked via a distributed datastore may exist in a plurality of datastore storage repositories (datastores) a coordinated identification system for the item across the plurality of datastores would be desirable. In an enterprise management situation, a CI may be available across a plurality of CMDBs. Accordingly, a coordinated and authoritative identification of CIs amongst a group of CMDBs operating together would be beneficial. This disclosure presents solutions for this and other related problems.